What climate change is not

[Schmelzer]

All that crap is irrelevant to this thread. I react negatively to your attempts to change the subject, especially when you try to shoehorn Republican Party propaganda into the discussion.

Fine. This we can take as an admission that the method described in #384 is not wrong at all.

Not bad. It looks like iceaura has at least read the paper, and identified the trap behind my description of #384. It is, in fact, a well-established method, named , and, even more, this was the method used in the Berdugo et al paper:

It is worth noting that the results of this exercise are temporal extrapolations of results obtained using spatial gradients, and therefore constitute what is known as a space-for-time substitution approach. The use of this approach is common in ecology (118–120), as it allows to infer hypotheses related to temporal changes when temporal series are not available or do not suffice to cover processes that operate at very slow temporal rates.
(Berdugo M. et al. (2020). Global ecosystem thresholds driven by aridity. Science 367, 7877-790; Suppl.Mat.)

The shifts were identified in the article (as they have been elsewhere, btw, in the research and findings concerning AGW). They were the central finding and most significant matter reported - with graphs, specific numbers, explicit analysis, etc. The warnings and implications were perfectly clear. How did you miss them?

Feel free to support this claim with quotes either from Berdugo et al. 2020 or from other peer-reviewed papers. Until you do it, this is only an alarmist fantasy.

It doesn't. Those are thresholds, your attempted deflection was into the boundaries you have seen on mountains and the like - a completely different matter, not involving thresholds (that word "too" was dishonesty, btw - you once demanded examples, remember? ).

I have explained many times the relation between the boundaries one sees in space and the thresholds. The thresholds are involved, they provide the causal explanation for the boundaries. This relation exists in the mountains as well as in the arid regions.

The article you are attempting to avoid deals with thresholds, including defining the ones of interest. Until you begin to deal with the central matter and most significant findings of that article, none of your "methods" (your assertions and false claims) will apply.

I'm dealing with it all the time, using with the method described in #384 essentially the same space-for-time substitution method used in the article too. Which you commented in this way:

"I simply apply the method I have described above in #384."

"Yep. You don't know any better, because you don't know anything about AGW."

The destructions will be rapid, according to the findings of the AGW researchers. The new creations will take a long time, according the the findings of researchers into those events.

As long as the change of the ecosystems follows the changing boundaries on the ground, most ecosystems will be destroyed only locally, they simply shift their location. And if there appear some natural borders like high mountains or the sea, human can help them.

After the disaster of AGW, regardless of how severe we allow it to be and how little we do to mitigate it, the biological world will (probably, unless we touch off the methane bomb) restore itself to complexity and verdancy after a while.

As explained many times, methane does not survive long time in the atmosphere. So, most of the "methane bomb" horror story is alarmism. What increases methane in the long range are permanent sources of new methane.

How long that takes will depend on how bad things got. If the land surface has to be repopulated with newly evolved beings from the midoceanic ridges, it will take many millions of years. That carries a low - but not infinitesimal - probability (as far as we know). More likely, a few thousand years will suffice - a couple of hundred human generations - even if we let things get out of hand. Is that reassuring to you?

Reassuring? No, it is simply funny. Such extreme alarmist fantasies are nothing but laughable.

To me, from the perspective of human civilization, the high probability of a future recreation of ecological complexity is not all that comforting - as a human being I confess to a certain bias toward civilization, agriculture, and wilderness, more or less as we enjoy them today; maybe even better (!). And that - according to the findings of the researchers in the field now - is under serious threat.

No. Every change will lead also to some losses. And to even more dangers of losses. And it is, of course, one of the aims of science to identify such dangers so that one can prevent them without losing something important. But neither civilization nor agriculture nor wilderness is under serious threat by the warming we experience now.

 

[iceaura]

Fine. This we can take as an admission that the method described in #384 is not wrong at all.

It's not really a method, but an intellectual template. It has some limited uses, none of which are relevant here.
It's wrongly applied here, yielding ridiculously false conclusions about the matter at hand.

The zone boundaries you have fixated on are not thresholds as reported in the article. They are not similar, related, or easily comparable. They are a change of subject, entirely. You clearly do not know that. Your posts reveal that you have so little idea of what the article I handed you was reporting it appears you still haven't read it.

And that introduces a topic we can discuss with you, which AGW is not. That would fit perfectly your standard handling of scientific references in the past - you glance at them, fit the Republican Party media feed's schtick into some phrases or terms you half-assed recognize, and post a smear of ignorant assertions and clueless presumptions on this forum. Then you demand other people prove to you that you have once again posted clueless ignorance, while you defend your position of ignorance against their efforts - as if it were other people's job to overcome your resistance to factual knowledge and information on your terms -

exactly the position adopted in all scientific matters by the US Republican Party, which uses it to exclude factual information and sound theory from the public discussion, and poison the well of any that somehow gets past by framing it as somebody's political "opinion", for partisan political advantage. You're a tool of scum, in other words.

Yours is a purely political position. There is no science it. There is no theoretical or evidence based support for your handling of AGW - your adoption of a willfully ignorant position, and your defense of it via various rhetorical maneuvers and deflections, has no role in a discussion of a scientific issue. It is a propaganda strategy, just as much from you as from the US Republican Party's media feed that is your only visible source of "information".

But neither civilization nor agriculture nor wilderness is under serious threat by the warming we experience now.

The article you claim to have read found otherwise, and backed their findings with great piles of evidence and sound theoretical reasoning - as does essentially all of the research into AGW so far. They find serious harms, several of them, to be not only possible but the expected consequences of AGW as it is happening now. You claim to have read that article - that is hardly possible, given your ignorance of its contents.

Meanwhile: You are simply denying the findings of the researchers into AGW - no argument, no evidence, no intellectual support, nothing but attempted derision and name-calling and ignorance on parade, except - except - persistent and unquestioning repetition of the propaganda memes fed you by the media wing of American fascism.

Repetition of falsehood and undermining of communication - your attempted tactic here - is how propaganda wins.

Furthermore: Your occasional references to AGW, as there, are all - every one so far - examples of what informed people refer to as "denial". These people are being polite; it's actually a bit worse than mere denial, because it's not personal (you are being fed your lines by professionals) and because it is not only denial, but attack. You are attacking the research and the researchers into AGW, and attempting to exclude them from the public discussion. Intellectually, you have taken on the role of the people who burn books.

 

[iceaura]

A couple of specific matters:

As long as the change of the ecosystems follows the changing boundaries on the ground, most ecosystems will be destroyed only locally, they simply shift their location.

The basic problem with this silly notion of ecosystems moving around like they had legs can be illustrated thus: It takes ten minutes to kill a tree that takes a hundred years to grow. Forest ecosystems normally require several generations of trees to reach equilibrium as an ecosystem.

But let's stick to the thread line so far:

According to the article you claim to have read, the change in the ecosystems brought about by crossing those thresholds will not follow the boundaries on the ground.

According to that article, the destruction of the ecosystems crossing those thresholds will not be "local" but instead involve very large regions together comprising 20% of the land surface of the planet.

According to that article, the ecosystems will not "move" - they will disappear. There will be no place to "shift" to for a long time, and no way to "shift" if there were (plants do not move rapidly enough. Neither do fungi or worms or the like).

According to that article, the beings in the destroyed ecosystems will not have time to find another place to live even if there were one - the destruction will be rapid, and with little warning, and cover large regions. It will not wait for the creation of similar ecosystems nearby.

One learns such things by reading articles and reports and published findings of the researchers in the field.

As explained many times, methane does not survive long time in the atmosphere. So, most of the "methane bomb" horror story is alarmism.

That doesn't follow - your "reasoning" is simply wrong. (As was your posted number for the survival time of methane, btw - you apparently did not know that the survival time of methane has been increasing, which bit of information should motivate you to reassess your reassurances, based as they were on false assumptions).

The methane bomb horror story merely requires that methane be emitted into the air fast enough to overpower the degradation and feed back into the emission sources strongly enough to accelerate the emission. That positive feedback loop - which definitely exists, in theory - is the "bomb". We haven't touched it off yet - at current concentrations, under current assumptions of how the bulk of methane hydrates would be thawed by AGW (predominantly by diffusion of heat from water through overburdening sediment in the deep ocean, which is very slow, for example), the feedback loop is still strongly damped. And the fact that it has never been touched off in the past is reassuring - it can't be too easy, or it would have happened. But AGW is new - never seen before - and the methane concentration is rising faster than our current assumptions predicted,

so there's something we've overlooked, and it is affecting a situation for which we have no solidly informative precedent. That's dangerous.

Methane does not have to survive very long to touch off the methane bomb. It just has to reach a critical concentration for a little while, maybe a few months or so - enough to launch the positive feedback loop, which will sustain itself. And it is increasing - that critical concentration was once known to be so far away as to be realistically unreachable; it's closer now, we don't know how much closer, and the methane concentration is still rising for reasons that will require changing our assumptions to explain.

Of course this is all improbable - the probability of touching off the methane bomb is almost certainly very low. Many very severe harms from AGW are orders of magnitude more likely, including some that would wreck industrial civilization within our lifetimes. It's not the main worry, in other words. But when the infinitesimal becomes the measurable, and you don't know why, you are taking a chance. And in this case what you are taking a chance on is realistically an extinction event. That's not something you want to overlook. It behooves us to get a solid grip on the methane boost we are measuring, the mechanisms of hydrate thawing we have apparently underestimated, and so forth. We're playing with dynamite.

 

[Schmelzer]

It's not really a method, but an intellectual template. It has some limited uses, none of which are relevant here.
It's wrongly applied here, yielding ridiculously false conclusions about the matter at hand.

Given that you repeat only the good old "you are wrong", without even explaining what the difference is between the correct and my wrong use, it remains simply a standard iceaura response without any substance.

Then you start nonsensical fantasies about Rep propaganda, also without any evidence. Cheap and boring.

You claim to have read that article - that is hardly possible, given your ignorance of its contents. Meanwhile: You are simply denying the findings of the researchers into AGW - no argument, no evidence, no intellectual support, nothing but attempted derision and name-calling and ignorance on parade, except - except - persistent and unquestioning repetition of the propaganda memes fed you by the media wing of American fascism.

Repeating lies which are so obviously lies will not help you. It becomes increasingly clear that you simply describe here what you are doing yourself. Not reading the articles, no argument, no evidence, no intellectual support, nothing but attempted derision and name-calling and ignorance on parade, with the only thing one has to change is Rep <-> Dem and fascism <-> communism.

The basic problem with this silly notion of ecosystems moving around like they had legs can be illustrated thus: It takes ten minutes to kill a tree that takes a hundred years to grow. Forest ecosystems normally require several generations of trees to reach equilibrium as an ecosystem.

This quite obviously depends on the question if there is such an ecosystem nearby which only expands or not.

According to the article you claim to have read, the change in the ecosystems brought about by crossing those thresholds will not follow the boundaries on the ground.

And several other fantasy claims starting with "According to that article," not supported by any quote from the article. Learn to quote.

That doesn't follow - your "reasoning" is simply wrong. (As was your posted number for the survival time of methane, btw - you apparently did not know that the survival time of methane has been increasing, which bit of information should motivate you to reassess your reassurances, based as they were on false assumptions).

Once you have not quoted any reliable source, but I have taken my information from a reliable source, there is no base for reevaluation. Moreover, once the survival time is only a few years, some changes do not change the main point, namely that simply freeing large amounts of methan once will have only a short time effect.

The methane bomb horror story merely requires that methane be emitted into the air fast enough to overpower the degradation and feed back into the emission sources strongly enough to accelerate the emission. That positive feedback loop - which definitely exists, in theory - is the "bomb".

Feel free to quote peer-reviewed articles. As long as you don't, these claims remain alarmists fantasies only, presented by a liar discredited many many times. Whenever you describe what I think (and claim to have read in my postings, without a quote, of course) the result is completely off. The same holds for the content of the article considered here. I have quoted the article already many times, you not a single time, but you write a lot of fantasies about what the article claims without a single quote. Who would believe that you are able to give a correct description of any other research? Laughable.

 

[iceaura]

Feel free to quote peer-reviewed articles. As long as you don't, these claims remain alarmists fantasies only, presented by a liar discredited many many times.

Once again I am credited with superpowers - I can turn physical realities into alarmist fantasies without lifting a finger.

Once you have not quoted any reliable source, but I have taken my information from a reliable source, there is no base for reevaluation.

Comedy.
I was addressing your piss-poor reasoning - you posted it right here, and I quoted it. Do I need to find a more reliable source for your posts than your posts? Maybe you could suggest one.

This quite obviously depends on the question if there is such an ecosystem nearby which only expands or not.

No, it doesn't. That question - or actually that confusion (there's no actual question there) was answered/dealt with in the article.

That's your fifth or sixth post here that conflicts with the analysis and findings reported in that article, which you again simply deny. The article of course comes complete with data and evidence and theory and peer-reviewed analysis and references to other research support and so forth - your denial comes with a couple of examples of mistaken reasoning and goofy presumptions about a matter of which you know less than nothing (not just ignorant, but actively deluded).

You really ought to read that article.

And several other fantasy claims starting with "According to that article," not supported by any quote from the article. Learn to quote.

Waste time and help you muddy the basic points by running your errands for you?
Nah. I'll pass.
I already found the article for you, an example of me doing your job in the first place; the quotes are all right there in the article for you to read whenever you feel up to informing yourself. You wouldn't even have to run down the hyperlinks, if you can follow the arguments.
- - -

Moreover, once the survival time is only a few years, some changes do not change the main point, namely that simply freeing large amounts of methan once will have only a short time effect.

That's dangerously false.
Freeing amounts of methane large enough to touch off a positive feedback loop involving the hydrates would have very dramatic and essentially permanent (millions of years to recover) effects.

And increases in the survival time reduce the critical amount of emitted methane necessary to touch off that positive feedback loop, as well as speeding up AGW even beyond its unprecedented earlier rate - the rapidly increasing survival time of methane in the atmosphere (from 4 or 5 to 12 or 15 years in less than a century, and possibly accelerating) is a serious threat in itself.

 

[Schmelzer]

Once again I am credited with superpowers - I can turn physical realities into alarmist fantasies without lifting a finger.
Comedy.

No. All what you do is to write some alarmist fantasies. If they have a relation to physical realities or not is unknown, given that you give no evidence for this, so they remain alarmist fantasies.

I was addressing your piss-poor reasoning - you posted it right here, and I quoted it. Do I need to find a more reliable source for your posts than your posts? Maybe you could suggest one.

I have explained you how one appropriately behaves many times. You seem uneducable and I have given up. Sorry. (Ok, hint: It is not sufficient to "address" some statement by claiming it is wrong. One has to present evidence for this. And this is even more necessary if the statement was a quote from a scientific article.)

That's your fifth or sixth post here that conflicts with the analysis and findings reported in that article, which you again simply deny.

And you remain unable to give even a single quote from the article which is in conflict with my statements. It increasingly looks like you have not even read it.

Waste time and help you muddy the basic points by running your errands for you?

No, and transform alarmist fantasies into reasonable arguments supported by some evidence.

I already found the article for you, an example of me doing your job in the first place;

LOL. It is my job to find evidence for your fantasies? Learn elementary things, namely who has the burden of proof.

That's dangerously false.
Freeing amounts of methane large enough to touch off a positive feedback loop involving the hydrates would have very dramatic and essentially permanent (millions of years to recover) effects.

Which remains an alarmist fantasy until you support this with evidence. The burden of proof is on your side.

And increases in the survival time reduce the critical amount of emitted methane necessary to touch off that positive feedback loop, as well as speeding up AGW even beyond its unprecedented earlier rate - the rapidly increasing survival time of methane in the atmosphere (from 4 or 5 to 12 or 15 years in less than a century, and possibly accelerating) is a serious threat in itself.

My claim, namely "The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is relatively short, ~9 to 10 years at present", was a quote from peer-reviewed literature, with the reference given (Brook, E. J., Sowers, T., & Orchardo, J. (1996). Rapid Variations in Atmospheric Methane Concentration During the Past 110,000 Years. Science, 273(5278), 1087-1091. doi:10.1126/science.273.5278.1087). Your claims are nothing but your claims - claims made by a discredited pseudonymous liar in some forum with "science" with almost no scientists among the participants. That's the difference. You are free to change this, but you don't even try. So, it is natural to conclude that these are simply some alarmist fantasies.

 

[CptBork]

I like this discussion because I have learned a lot. Of course, not by learning from the posts of the alarmists, who give almost nothing, except the information that they have no counterarguments. But I do some research answering their attempts to make objections. And this is the part where I learn a lot of interesting things. Say, salination. I had not cared about it completely, if something is salty and there unusable today it remain unusable, so why one would care. But, once provoked, I thought, so what let's look what can be done with salty soil in some arid region where climate change gives us more rain. Just for information. It appears, a lot can be done. Desalination of soil is a procedure already done at many places, a few years are sufficient to improve the situation essentially, all one needs for this is - you guess - more water. So I was wrong thinking that such salty deserts are anyway unusable because of the salt - with enough rain, problems with salt will be solved together with the salt. That's not deep scientific research, but Wikipedia level collection of elementary information, but so what, I have learned something, corrected an own error, and gained even a new argument against the alarmists, namely another positive effect of more precipitation. I found this worth to write <a href="https://ilja-schmelzer.de/climate/desalination.php">another page against the climate hysteria</a>.

Same for the issue with sea level rise. I was aware about the negligible actual increase of 3 mm per year and therefore did not care much. Once provoked, I learned a lot more, in particular that even Greenland melting completely gives not that much increase, 7.2 m, that's all. And even together with the whole Antarctica the increase will be only 66 m. Moreover, this comes only after a lot of millenia. Then I tried to find out if it would be possible to protect the whole of the Netherlands even against these 66 m. It appeared quite unproblematic. The new element, that one would have to pump the water arriving there via the Rhein river into the sea, appeared to be cheap enough to be affordable. Then I looked at the even more rigorous possibility to protect the whole Baltic Sea from the increase by cutting its connection with the North Sea. It did not look unsolvable too, even with actual technologies - no need for new technologies during the next several thousand years, imagine. The map of the Earth in the worst case of 66 m sea level rise was also interesting. See <a href="https://ilja-schmelzer.de/climate/sea-level.php">this page</a>.

Ah, so you had a conclusion already decided, then took a peek at what the actual data shows, and conveniently found that every new piece of information agrees with everything you've already argued for. Excellent work there Sherlockovic, except that this mode of thinking is known as "confirmation bias", like Biblical scholars who find a shard of pottery and thus conclude that without a doubt, Jonah really was swallowed and spat back out whole by a godly whale just like Pinocchio. No doubt if an asteroid is set to hit Earth, you will argue that the benefits outweigh the costs of deflecting it, unless a revised calculation shows its trajectory as being Moscow or St. Petersburg (Vladivostok wouldn't be a big loss because they're rebellious anyhow).

 

[iceaura]

My claim, namely "The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is relatively short, ~9 to 10 years at present", was a quote from peer-reviewed literature, with the reference given (Brook, E. J., Sowers, T., & Orchardo, J. (1996). Rapid Variations in Atmospheric Methane Concentration During the Past 110,000 Years. Science, 273(5278), 1087-1091. doi:10.1126/science.273.5278.1087).

Your claim was that methane's short residence time meant it could cause only small and short term problems. That claim is wrong.

Ok, hint: It is not sufficient to "address" some statement by claiming it is wrong. -.

When dealing with posts like yours, it is not only easily sufficient - it's the appropriate response.

Which remains an alarmist fantasy until you support this with evidence

Schmelzer thinks reality does not exist until I have supported it with evidence.

LOL. It is my job to find evidence for your fantasies?

It is your job to inform yourself about the subjects of your posts.

Learn elementary things, namely who has the burden of proof.

That's for argument. I'm not arguing.

If they have a relation to physical realities or not is unknown, given that you give no evidence for this,

Lots of people know stuff about physical reality without needing me to provide their education. The relation between my posts and reality is not unknown to people who know something about AGW.

Meanwhile, after wading through the denialist meme-postings, we have an idea of what climate change is not -

it's not what the Republican media feed says it is.

 

[Schmelzer]

Your claim was that methane's short residence time meant it could cause only small and short term problems. That claim is wrong.

As usual, my claim is presented incorrectly. Even two errors. First, I have not said that the problems have to be small. Large amounts of methane could have large effects. Second, I have also said that permanent sources of methane can have permanent consequences.

I'm not arguing.

Indeed. What you present here is alarmism, ignorance of counterarguments, cheap propaganda based on lies.

Lots of people know stuff about physical reality without needing me to provide their education. The relation between my posts and reality is not unknown to people who know something about AGW.

Yes, it is known that your claims have nothing to do with reality, but are alarmist bs.

 

[Schmelzer]

Ah, so you had a conclusion already decided, then took a peek at what the actual data shows, and conveniently found that every new piece of information agrees with everything you've already argued for. Excellent work there Sherlockovic, except that this mode of thinking is known as "confirmation bias", like Biblical scholars who find a shard of pottery and thus conclude that without a doubt, Jonah really was swallowed and spat back out whole by a godly whale just like Pinocchio. No doubt if an asteroid is set to hit Earth, you will argue that the benefits outweigh the costs of deflecting it, unless a revised calculation shows its trajectory as being Moscow or St. Petersburg (Vladivostok wouldn't be a big loss because they're rebellious anyhow).

Except that I had not at all decided before that the desalination caused by increasing precipitation defines another advantage of climate change. I had no opinion about it at all, beyond the trivial one, that soil which is too salty is not good for agriculture.

And to name something confirmation bias is a nice try, but not an argument about the facts. Any objection about the content itself?

 

[iceaura]

As usual, my claim is presented incorrectly. Even two errors. First, I have not said that the problems have to be small. Large amounts of methane could have large effects. Second, I have also said that permanent sources of methane can have permanent consequences.

You said that methanes's short residence time meant that as it is being released now it could have only short term, less serious, effects.
You said that only permanent sources of methane could have permanent effects.

Both of those claims are simple, direct denials of the findings of AGW research.

 

[Schmelzer]

You said that methanes's short residence time meant that as it is being released now it could have only short term, less serious, effects.
You said that only permanent sources of methane could have permanent effects.
Both of those claims are simple, direct denials of the findings of AGW research.

Prove this with quotes from peer-reviewed research papers.

 

[iceaura]

Prove this with quotes from peer-reviewed research papers.

Let's take this as the standard approach of the standard AGW denialist, in this thread about what "climate change" ( presumably: AGW) is not.

They should do their own homework. It's the only way they learn outside of personal disaster, and the methane stuff is all over the place - decades of research, by now. They could read the Wiki page, for chrissake.

They have a lot of catching up to do, in AGW research - but they know that (they often go out of their way to justify it), so there's hope for them in that respect.

Until they have acquired some factual knowledge, they can't discuss any of the issues involved in AGW. That - that incapability from ignorance is inevitable, and has no propaganda-balancing equivalent among the knowledgable - is something they don't know, unfortunately. So maybe it's hopeless.

Unless they are simply repeating what is their minion mission to repeat, of course - bad faith afflicts all conscious media reps of fascist movements. That brings hope - but requires something on the order of repentance, profound psychological adjustment, so maybe not much.

Flip a coin.

Meanwhile, the relevance here would be that "what climate change is not" - meaning, apparently, what AGW is not - has been reasonably well illustrated by Schmelzer's posts, if read carefully.

Rule of thumb: AGW is not whatever Schmelzer claims, says, hints, or implies, it is. No coin flip necessary - his record is spotless, or all spot, or whatever.

 

[Schmelzer]

They should do their own homework. It's the only way they learn outside of personal disaster, and the methane stuff is all over the place - decades of research, by now. They could read the Wiki page, for chrissake.

If you make claims, it is your homework to support it with evidence. Even if only from the Wiki page, for chrissake. This is named burden of proof.

(Compare the amount of text written in comparison with quoting with copypaste from Wiki to support the claim he made. This alone strongly indicates that reading Wiki gives nothing in support of the claim. Ok, given that my claim was a quote from the peer-reviewed literature itself, this would not give much anyway.)

 

[iceaura]

If you make claims, it is your homework to support it with evidence. Even if only from the Wiki page, for chrissake. This is named burden of proof.

As you seem to have forgotten once again: I am not arguing with you.

Your education is your responsibility. When you choose to hire a teacher, and have paid them enough to deal with your willful insistence on remaining ignorant, you can demand whatever you need to motivate you to learn stuff. Me, you haven't paid a nickel.

(We are also reminded of an earlier rule of thumb: in any post from a purveyor of the American Republican media feed, everything after the word "if" is bullshit)

Meanwhile:
What else "climate change" in the missives of wingnuts is not: it is not change in the climate. It has little or nothing to do with the physical world, being instead an imaginary category of propaganda supposedly designed to lure or drive the fearful populace into the tyranny of the neoliberal globalist agenda. It replaces anthropogenic global warming and all other effects of the CO2 boost in the public awareness, thereby dismissing the boost as a serious threat - not in physical reality, where it continues to cause havoc and set worse in motion for the near future, but in the world of taxes and regulations which a public or political discussion of AGW would inevitably lead to.

 

[sculptor]

looking out my back door
yesterday

 

[James R]

looking out my back door

Another good example of what climate change is not. It is not weather.

Thanks, sculptor!

 

[sculptor]

Another good example of what climate change is not. It is not weather.

Thanks, sculptor!

or
One may use weather patterns to deduce climate change.

There are many models/hypotheses of climate change.
Never underestimate the value of empirical evidence.
...
"There’s no direct correlation currently between the length and intensity of a winter and the seasons that follow, but in recent years, a trend has emerged.
... the last few years have indicated the longer a winter lasts, the later the following winter arrives. Still, it remains unclear if that is a direct correlation or simply a coincidence.
This April is already one of the coldest on record, and by the end of the month it could become the coldest."
from:
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loc...-could-say-something-about-next-winter/44768/

Make of that what you will.
a trend? ... for how long? and, if a trend, then causal factor?
coincidence?
just an anomaly?

 

[James R]

sculptor:

Are you aware that global heating does not mean that everywhere will necessarily have milder or shorter winters (for instance)? Nor does having a record cold winter in one localised area mean that global heating is bunk. One effect of global heating is to make the weather more unstable. Violent storms happen more often. Extreme cold snaps happen more often, as do extreme heat waves, but not necessarily in the same places. The average hurricane strength increases, but that doesn't mean there are no more mild hurricanes (is that an oxymoron?).

Climate models are tested against empirical evidence all the time, and improved in response.

 

[sculptor]

...

Climate models are tested against empirical evidence all the time, and improved in response.

Well, "improvement" is probably good, and likely needed.

Have you read the IPCC mission statement?